"Best-Practice" is Not Strategy

When developing a strategy, it is important to recognize the difference between strategic and operational decisions.

Strategy is the choice of how and where to compete. Strategy determines what business the organization is in, its target market, identifies its particular strengths and how it is differentiated from its competitors. Strategic decisions establish the direction in which the organization will travel. Conversely, operational decisions determine how the organization will get there.

Operational tasks include market research, product and service development, pricing, promotion and sales, budgeting, staffing, setting key performance indicators, and measurement of results. These are functional specialties. Usually there is someone in the organization with the right expertise to get results in these areas, or it is possible to bring in an expert on a short-term contract who knows what needs to be done. Operational decisions are informed by "best practices". You look at what other people have done, and either copy them or learn from their mistakes.

When it comes to developing a new strategy, however, there is no "best practice". By definition, you are pioneering. Strategy requires reconceptualizing the organization's purpose, conceiving a new vision, to redefining your target market(s), recognizing strengths that were not previously identified, and segmenting your customer base in a new way, to identify new sources of competitive advantage. This requires challenging all your assumptions about the correctness of what is, and focusing instead on what could be.

Another distinction could be this. An operational issue is one where someone knows the answer. The expertise is available, either within the organization, or externally. A strategic issue is one where no one knows the answer, because a new path is being forged. No one really knows how your business should compete. You make a choice and then build an implementation plan based on this choice.

You don't get competitive advantage by copying someone else's strategy. Your strategy should be unique, based on the current environment, the needs of your chosen target market and the organization's unique strengths.

When you are building a strategy, the question "What are other people doing?" should sound alarm bells. Marketing guru Seth Godin says "By the time there is a case study in your specific industry, it's going to be way too late for you to catch up." Competitive advantage goes to those who choose a unique path and commit to its success.

The first step in formulating a new strategy is to accept that no one knows the answer. The complexity of this task should never be underestimated. Everyone involved needs to be willing to suspend judgment, explore the questions and resist the temptation to supply the "answers" from their own expert point of view.

Thinking in Pictures

Business strategy needs a vision, and the first ingredient is imagination.

A mental picture of a desired future situation motivates people much more than does a carefully worded vision statement. If people can “see” what they are trying to achieve, it brings the business vision alive for them.

Imagination (sometimes called “the mind’s eye”) is “the ability to form images and ideas in the mind, especially of things never seen or experienced directly”.

To come up with an aspirational vision for the business, you need to project yourself into the future, take a quantum leap, and see beyond the incremental options of extending, adding-onto or tweaking what already exists.

Some people are more imaginative than others, probably because they permit themselves to be. Some people see themselves as “unimaginative”. Sometimes imagination is denigrated using phrases such as “that’s fanciful”, “completely unrealistic”, “you’re dreaming”, and “she has an overactive imagination”. Sharing an imagined new future requires courage, and the knowledge that there is likely to be some resistance.

There are three skills needed here:
1. Being able to visualize an alternative future, and
2. Being able to describe to others what you see, and
3. Being able to listen to what others are imagining, whilst suspending judgment.

Even thinking about a future very different from the present can feel extremely audacious. Have you ever thought fleetingly about some possibility and then thought better of it, not even permitting yourself to develop the idea, let alone voice it to others?

To create a mental picture of your new future, speak to yourself as if you are already achieving it, e.g. “We are…” “We have…” rather than “We will…” or “We want to…”

Marketing pioneer Theodore Levitt said “Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed”. Let your imagination go to work for you.

Without imagination, you’re stuck in precedent.